Wrong Tools

Roleplaying has had brief flashes of interest from the public at large, but has never really broken out in a big way. Instead, other games just co-opt the working bits and forge ahead into new genres.

So, maybe the experience that I’m trying to get from roleplaying just isn’t possible. And that I’ve been using the wrong tools for years in an attempt to make it work. Maybe rolling dice is a terrible way to conjure up a world within the minds of multiple people at the same time. Maybe a piece of paper with a whole bunch of obscure acronyms and some numbers is the worst way to convince people to invent interesting and unique characters.

Maybe the only thing our books full of fantasy art and mathematical formulas are really good for are spawning more charts and tables, with even more obscure fantasy weapons statted out. Maybe the only thing this artform was ever any good at was dramatizing killing monsters. And while that’s fine, it was never really what I wanted. So maybe roleplaying games are the wrong medium – the wrong tool. Maybe I’ve been attempting to make stained glass windows with only a hammer. Whereas lots of people are happily bashing their hammer into the table over and over, I’m just sad that my hammer doesn’t turn out beautiful butterflies (That metaphor got pretty mixed).